In the summer of 2010 I spent weeks interviewing freelancers trying to earn a living in the TV production sector.

Here were talented people living from hand to mouth, forced to move back home or rely on partners with steady jobs. One, a production manager, had to ask her parents to pay her mortgage, between on/off work on a well-known drama.

Even those doing well were in anguish about long-term prospects. Few could see a proper career path opening up before them. An investigative journalist on a major current affairs series was about to give up in disgust over short-term contracts to become an academic.

It is clear something is rotten in the state of TV training and a fair share of the blame has to be laid at the powerful independent production sector, which has enjoyed enormous benefits since 1990.

There is the statutory 25% independent production quota, regional production quotas, and in the last decade a window of creative competition opening up more BBC production to outside supplier, combined with a massive transfer of assets, in the form of ownership of programme rights, from broadcasters to indies.

They have responded to this favourable treatment, not by increasing training, but by reducing the amount paid into a central pot, the Indie Training Fund, changing the basis on which a 0.25% levy on production fees is paid.

Until 2007 all independent producers contributed to the ITF, unless specifically opting out. Since then, a producer has to opt in to pay. The amount now raised, some £450,000 annually, compares with the £60m the BBC is estimated to spend on training annually.

To be fair, senior figures in the independent sector acknowledge the failings. Nick Catliff, chair of the Indie Training Fund, one of the key stakeholders in Skillset, said there had to be change: "We need a lot more money for training."

Catliff, managing director of Lion Television, the independent producer behind shows including Horrible Histories, added: "You can run an independent and never do any training, and live off the backs of others who do ... there is a gulf between big and small independents. But it is a new world."

He said "independent production is not the wild west it used to be" and as more production was outsourced to independents, broadcasters needed assurance that programmes were being made by trained experts.

Eileen Gallagher, founder of Shed Media, and now leading an industry-wide inquiry into the scale of the problem said: "There is so much confusion and finger pointing. The problem is one of fragmentation, everyone is doing their own thing. But the area to concentrate on is freelance training."

Gallagher believes the amount of training being undertaken across the industry is under reported because companies such as Shed run their own in-house schemes, and preferred to bring in experts as required. Shed is spending £120,000 a year, including training for TV drama script writing, directly relevant to its contracts for shows such as Waterloo Road and Garrow's Law.

One simple solution, given the forthcoming communications green paper, is to introduce a compulsory training levy. Or, at least, if that threat is made, the indie sector may begin to reform.

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